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Au Revoir, France.

Eva obviously had a make-France-lose machine in her hands. Killll herrrrr!!!!

Au revoir, Thierry.

Au revoir, Coupet.

Au revoir, Broken Paddy V.
After an astonishingly crap match against Romania that served no purpose other than to steal precious nap time away from me, I sat down to watch last Friday’s match against the Dutch optimistic that Les Bleus would finally find their balls and get it together.

Of course, no such thing occurred. They lost 4-1.

After Kuyt’s first goal of the match — Malouda, do NOT prop him up! Let him fall! What are you doinggggg?! Ugh! — I began the process of resigning myself to the inevitable: this tournament was clearly just not going the happen for the French.

Abidal’s red card yesterday against Italy, for example, roused my interest for literally five seconds before I sighed and was on with next.
[Dame’s note: But for the record, and because everyone enjoys whining about referees, I did think it was a touch drastic — last defender (yes), in the area (of course), but I didn’t see enough contact to warrant the call and a few other defenders were creeping up on Toni (Makelele, for one, was just to the left) so it wasn’t a clear enough goal scoring opp., in my view. With that said, Abidal should have had enough sense not to act all crazy ‘I’m going to graze your baaaaack!’ style behind Toni like that. Italian strikers famously enjoy a good flop and he should’ve been a bit more cautious instead of acting all willy-nilly.]

Benzema’s bad luck (free kick, hits wall, back at his feet, what the hell… repeat over and over) was only slightly irritating. Thierry Henry’s big-match-bottling moments were there but, again, so fully expected that I found them to be only slightly bothersome.

As for Domenech, I don’t even know what to say. What a truly bizarre way to wrap up his reign. Surely, he’s going to be sacked soon.

“Sorry, we wanted to wait until the time was right to fire you, but we have to start interviews right away, and we can’t wait until Venus is in retrograde. If it makes you feel any better, we’re looking to hire a Libra.”

The Dutch have ben an utter delight, and their game against Russia looks to be just as fun. Seriously, if you made Guus Hiddink coach of the Knicks he’d somehow get them to the Eastern Conference finals. Just please please please no German mercenaries vs Italian floppers in the finals. That would suck. Does Germany have any actual Germans on their team?